The Royal Navy and BAE Systems plc were pleased as punch yesterday to announce that their implementation of Windows for Submarines™ is complete ahead of schedule. Windows boxes on Ethernet LANs are now in control of the UK's nuclear-propelled and nuclear-armed warship fleet.
The programme is called Submarine Command System Next …

Vincennes?

I thought the main cause of the USS Vincennes Airbus disaster was having an overly-aggressive fleshie in charge, not a possibly insecure or ineffective computerised fire control system? As I recall, the Aegis fire control system did its job right to spec., it was the fleshies reading the situation that got it wrong, mainly due to poor processes and an aggressive mindset probably partially brought about by the attack on USS Stark the year before, where 37 US sailors died becasue they didn't react when attacked by an Iraqi Mirage.

In the meantime, I'm staggered by ANYTHING being installed by the MoD in only eighteen days! And BAe saving money with an off-the-shelf purchase - what a scary precedent! Next you'll be telling me it didn't require 200+ civil servants to support the purchase.....

re: XP?

....don't forget there's a PC World in every home port! They just need to goto PC World website, order a Vista upgrade and get the junior rating to collect in 30 minutes. Shame there's no parking berths for Nuclear Subs at my local PC World....is that discrimination?

Ways of saving money, part 71

"The use of commercial-off-the-shelf technology is expected to save the taxpayer as much as £22m in support costs over the next ten years - a bit more than £2m a year, or about a thousandth off Trident's running costs."

Trident Submarines

So, spooks was half right?

All those laughing at the notion of a piece of off-the-shelf malware disabling a submarine may wish to reconsider their positions.

Let's just hope that a group of security experts were allowed to code-review the version of Windows being used. One assumes that the MoD also get a different license agreement than the rest of us, or choose to ignore the part about mission-critical systems.

Is this a first step to Linux?

If they can do it with Windows they can do it with Linux or gOS or whatever...? But why would they want to? is a better question? Does this mean that we'll have a Seaborne BOFH episode soon?

There may be a capital cost saving, there may be an operational cost saving but I'd be very interested in knowing that the risk assessment for the implementation took in a few more areas and looked at the critical performace parameters affected by this dinky idea.

But, hey, I'm only a taxpayer and crown subject - why should my interests matter when its "toys for the (armchair) boys".

Windows for Warships

I know that at least *some* of the systems on the T45 are Windows 2000 based and have proved to be stable platforms in (very) extensive testing. I have no experience of the XP systems, so can't comment there.

Anon, because I have no wish to be visited by the Black Helicopters!!!

BSOD?

@Mark_T

Racist twat, if you were better informed or educated you would know that a lot of the current navy spending is in the south of England, in Appledore, in north Devon, Portsmouth, Barrow-in-Furness. Never mind the many other MoD contracts given out to English based companies. Ffs are you not happy enough that they have destroyed pretty much every historic Scottish Army regiment. TBH I'm Surprised there is anything still made in Scotland after the Tories, who were not voted for in Scotland, demolished pretty much all heavy industry in fact try reading more of Lewis Pages articles and you'll see that although he tends to be anti scots he does admit this:

"the Conservatives cynically shifted Trident submarine refit work south at huge cost, abandoning a partly-completed drydock" This was from Gordon Browns constituancy.

FM1600B

Back in my day (1989), the Ferranti FM1600B was the backbone of the ship's 'information superhighway' and the OS was loaded from punched paper the point being that paper tape was immune to EMP. I presume these windows boxes will have magnetic HDD's....interesting.

Give me the 1600B any day. Setting switches on the main console so that the bit display counted in binary was much more fun than playing minesweeper :)

games

I wonder who will 'support' this

I wonder who will support this?

I worked for a company who provided support to the Navy at one of their training facilities. They were just about all Windows desktops apart from a few thin clients which were running Windows Terminal Services.

I remember on one occasion that one of the Terminal Servers in the cluster fell over and started to take down all 10 machines in the cluster.

We're all going to die....

Windows - but not as we know it

For the consoles on today's industrial control systems, Windows isn't a bad choice. This obviously isn't an out-of-the-box install, with all manner of DLL hell and yucky services running. This is a Windows kernel with some proper device drivers for the specific hardware, likely to be pared back to the minimum install, with few if any network services running. Think of it as a display appliance based on a Windows kernel.

This is as far from the bloated free-for-all of a consumer installation as a Linux kernel based appliance is from Intrepid Ibex. I'm no Microsoft fan, but do try to judge the system as deployed, not your own pre-conceptions of transplanting a c**pware infested peesee into the environment.

The BIG BLUE screen of death

New rules still needs old skool (paranoia).

Is there cyrypto/authentication on the internal LAN? Could I just plug a laptot in and even bridge it to the totties WiFi? Just because a network is isolated from the rest of the world does not mean its secure, so you have to be there to hack it, or point guns/money at someone who will do the job for you.

Also ...

... having no desire to be visited by Black Helicopters, I shall remain anonymous.

Windows for Warships, or whatever it's official title, doesn't necessarily run everything. Consoles and some peripheral devices may be hosted via a Windows box, which, incidentally, will have a carefully customised build installed, but some core functions may, and probably do, remain on specialised hardware. As to reliability, you'd be surprised how reliable a PC can be if it's properly housed and hardened, and built from good components in the first place. I could tell you stories about PCs surviving some fairly severe events, but ..... then there's those darn Black Helicopters again.

And it's not like they sit you at a screen with regular keyboard and mouse - the user interface is specially built, including customised buttons (for example, on a separate touch-screen).

Of course, they'd have done better if they'd chosen Linux, but if they were smart enough to do that, they wouldn't be working in Defence.

Oh, regarding the "man in the loop" missile release argument .... seeing as I work very closely with those systems ......... generally speaking, Lewis is right. For example, this can happen now when ....... oh, darn, Black Helicopters again!

Re:Vincennes

" I thought the main cause of the USS Vincennes Airbus disaster was having an overly-aggressive fleshie in charge, not a possibly insecure or ineffective computerised fire control system? "

I think his point was that the Vincennes shot because the Airbus didn't respond to the warnings made on the radio, and that a computer failure could result in a similar loss of comms systems, meaning no response to the warnings....

@ Matt Bryant @AC (12:59) @Cam Colley

The USS Vincennes episode was indeed as Matt describes. One of the reasons *why* the T45 is the way it is.

@AC (Linux? 12:59) who would "be very interested in knowing that the risk assessment for the implementation took in a few more areas and looked at the critical performace parameters affected by this dinky idea" - yes, there is extensive risk analysis in the design / configuration of COTS products for military applications.

@Cameron Colley: "Let's just hope that a group of security experts were allowed to code-review the version of Windows being used. One assumes that the MoD also get a different license agreement ". Sadly, 'no' and 'no'. Windoze is as grey a lump of sludge to MoD as it is to any other end user; the assurance derives mostly from the extensive testing alluded to by the AC worried about helicopters.

A submarine commanded by...

@Cameron Colley

> Let's just hope that a group of security experts were allowed to code-review the version of Windows being used. One assumes that the MoD also get a different license agreement than the rest of us, or choose to ignore the part about mission-critical systems.

Heard the one about the Chinook codes? Hope and assume what you like, but do you suppose the Chinook codes are worth more or less than Window$? Right. And with HMG's record on data security? No chance.

@Matt D

You can't be serious that think Trident should be abandoned and not replaced? It's not as if we are ever going to use them unless it is in defense, and if we don't have them then what are we supposed to use as an effective deterrent?